Studio
We got into the business in the late noughties when starting up indie design practices were all the rage. Fast forward: twelve years and four office moves later, we found ourselves in the latest iteration of, well—ourselves. Over the decade as we lose ourselves in the daily grind, what has changed and what has remained constant?
A line from the Joe Bastianich book Restaurant Man stuck—“it’s better to stay lukewarm for twenty years than hot for six months.” While that’s certainly not a mantra that we live by, it does somewhat describe the way we’ve operated all these years—quietly doing the work and then be contented to let the (hopefully good) words get around. Once the work is done, we simply moved on without fanfare. Quiet confidence? Indifference? Or just us being too passive? Leave us a note—we’d love to hear what you think.
2021 had been a watershed year for many. This long overdue website is perhaps a reaction to the realisation that, as a business we do need to be seen and heard.
Do we deserve to be seen and heard? For now the best probable thing we can do is to make our experiences, observations and insights of our works as widely seen as possible. Only with enough care and respect we give to the work, can it then be fairly judged by you the audience. This website is also a way for ourselves to remember the works we’ve done and found joy in the process; for our would-be clients to have a sense of whether we might be a good creative fit; and for our designers to have a beacon of where good work should be headed and for them to have a platform to be seen.
This is Bureau's 4th studio in the Henderson industrial area. A disparaged collection of sticks and the odd storage box by the door means you're at the right address. Visitors are greeted by a nondescript black framed door. The presence of a hulking black land rover usually signals that someone's in. We don't expect surprise visitors so there are no doorbells.
The main meeting space converts into a war room for discussions and big presentations. At some point it's even been turned into a gallery, clothing store and a tropical jungle. The room was measured out to fit a proper ping pong table which we have yet to design so we can't host a tournament at the moment—watch this space.
We own a Vandercook No.4 proof press—lovingly rebuilt by Steve Robinson of Rising Sun, Indiana. The only other Vandercook that we know of in Singapore is an SP15 from The Gentlemen's Press. This is a piece of graphic design history that reminds us of how far the industry has come from the days where advertising posters were hand carved and you can't hit the UNDO keys.
Wander up the precarous cement steps to the mezzanine floor. Here, be greeted by a supersized California Type Case built by our trusty handy man Richard. He still does not understand why our shelves needed to be arranged in such a precise way. We used it as a partition for our old Tiong Bahru studio. It survived three moves to finally be retired here to hold our design library. An eclectic collection of pictures now sit atop.
We take things seriously.
Most of all the coffee ritual.
Rituals are highly structured and predictable.
We like structure and predictability.
But structure and predictability in our process does not mean that the work has to turn out drab.
About Us
Byline—Bureau is the official website of Bureau Private Limited. Headquartered in Singapore, Bureau is a general graphic design services company. Our works include, but are not limited to, Brand Identity Design, Packaging Design, Editorial Design, Exhibition and Event Space Design and Strategic Planning. We've been most commonly mis-pronounced as Boo-Ree-O or Biu-Ree-You. The correct pronounciation though, is Biu-Roh.
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